blog/archive/2016/03/03.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from March 2016</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from March 2016</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>UsingQR - &quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Sat, 19 Mar 2016 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in 2013 I proposed
  15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html&quot;&gt;a
  16 way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
  17 adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice&lt;/a&gt;.  I
  18 suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
  19 for name and address, but any format would work.  I did not do
  20 anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
  21 something like it.  It would make it possible to efficiently send
  22 machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.&lt;/p&gt;
  23
  24 &lt;p&gt;This was the background when I came across a proposal and
  25 specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
  26 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visma.com/&quot;&gt;Visma&lt;/a&gt; in Sweden called
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;http://usingqr.com/&quot;&gt;UsingQR&lt;/a&gt;.  Their PDF invoices contain
  28 a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
  29 This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
  30 specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
  31 get a more bogus entry).  I&#39;ve reformatted the JSON to make it easier
  32 to read.  Normally this is all on one long line:&lt;/p&gt;
  33
  34 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png&quot; align=&quot;right&quot;&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  35 {
  36  &quot;vh&quot;:500.00,
  37  &quot;vm&quot;:0,
  38  &quot;vl&quot;:0,
  39  &quot;uqr&quot;:1,
  40  &quot;tp&quot;:1,
  41  &quot;nme&quot;:&quot;Din Leverandør&quot;,
  42  &quot;cc&quot;:&quot;NO&quot;,
  43  &quot;cid&quot;:&quot;997912345 MVA&quot;,
  44  &quot;iref&quot;:&quot;12300001&quot;,
  45  &quot;idt&quot;:&quot;20151022&quot;,
  46  &quot;ddt&quot;:&quot;20151105&quot;,
  47  &quot;due&quot;:2500.0000,
  48  &quot;cur&quot;:&quot;NOK&quot;,
  49  &quot;pt&quot;:&quot;BBAN&quot;,
  50  &quot;acc&quot;:&quot;17202612345&quot;,
  51  &quot;bc&quot;:&quot;BIENNOK1&quot;,
  52  &quot;adr&quot;:&quot;0313 OSLO&quot;
  53 }
  54 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  55
  56 &lt;/p&gt;The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
  57 &lt;a href=&quot;http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf&quot;&gt;format
  58 specification&lt;/a&gt; (revision 2 from june 2014).  The format seem to
  59 have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
  60 of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
  61 Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
  64 the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
  65 specification.  Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
  66 November to clarify.  Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
  67 visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
  68 protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
  69 usage limitations for the format.  I urged her to make sure this was
  70 explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
  71 unfortunately this has not happened yet.  So I guess if there is
  72 submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
  73 infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
  74 risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
  75 the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so.  At least
  76 with patents, there is always
  77 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/&quot;&gt;a
  78 chance of getting sued...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
  81 independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
  82 they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
  83 with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this.  Their plan was
  84 to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
  85 evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular.  I hope
  86 they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
  87 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ietf.org/&quot;&gt;IETF&lt;/a&gt; is the correct place to
  88 maintain such specification.&lt;/p&gt;
  89 </description>
  90         </item>
  91
  92         <item>
  93                 <title>Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</title>
  94                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</link>
  95                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</guid>
  96                 <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  97                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Back in September, I blogged about
  98 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html&quot;&gt;the
  99 system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery&lt;/a&gt;, and
 100 how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced).  I
 101 created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
 102 but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
 103 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;a battery-stats
 104 package in Debian&lt;/a&gt; that should do the same thing, and I did not see
 105 a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
 106 fixed instead.  I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
 107 hoped someone would step in and fix it.  But no-one did.&lt;/p&gt;
 108
 109 &lt;p&gt;I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
 110 hands.  The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
 111 battery stats (&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;available from github&lt;/a&gt;) and part of the team maintaining
 112 battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
 113 able to collect battery status using the &lt;tt&gt;/sys/class/power_supply/&lt;/tt&gt;
 114 information provided by the Linux kernel.  If you install the
 115 battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
 116 graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
 117 status of the battery.  The source package build and work just fine in
 118 Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
 119 tested).  The default graph you get for that system look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 120
 121 &lt;p align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png&quot; width=&quot;70%&quot; align=&quot;center&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 122
 123 &lt;p&gt;My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
 124 battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
 125 about the battery.  The scripts are merged into the upstream
 126 battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
 127 yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way.  Will have to test a
 128 bit more before I make a new release.&lt;/p&gt;
 129
 130 &lt;p&gt;I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
 131 suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
 132 impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
 133 and graphing.&lt;/p&gt;
 134
 135 &lt;p&gt;If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
 136 battery, check out the battery-stats package in
 137 &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats&quot;&gt;Debian&lt;/a&gt; and
 138 on
 139 &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats&quot;&gt;github&lt;/a&gt;.
 140 I would love some help to improve the system further.&lt;/p&gt;
 141 </description>
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